gdc

Gamevil was at GDC again this year, showing off a freemium puzzle game with some especially flashy fantasy elements. In Dungeon Link, players build a party of heroes who are placed on a grid with enemies. By tracing heroes from their origin square to the same-colored target zone, players execute attacks on enemies and eliminate tiles. The trick is, these paths will block off future lines of...

At GDC 2015 NVIDIA took their wraps off another Shield product, only this one is built for TV. The Shield console will fully leverage Grid, a service whereby NVIDIA will host games on their servers and beam them to your home for playing. The real MVP of the show is NVIDIA's new Tegra X1 processor, which will sling 4K video about willy nilly and handle graphics twice as well as the K1 chip...

GDC — The Game Developers Conference — takes place in San Francisco, California each year in early spring. As always, expect to see previews of the latest and greatest games for Android and details about when they're hitting Google Play.

The Game Developer Conference is underway with a few days of sessions before the expo floor opens. Tonight graphics titan NVIDIA is hosting a press conference that is bound to be of interest to those of us in the Android sphere. We've got a live video stream available here, plus our own color commentary, photos, and community chat to enjoy.
The gap between mobile and console gaming is rapidly...

At GDC 2014, we scoped out a very exciting Lego game coming from Funcom. Unlike most of the mobile Lego games which latch onto a franchise like Batman or Harry Potter, this new multiplayer action game will cover the whole swath of classic Lego settings, like Pirate World, Medieval World, Space World, and lots more.
Here's the gist: you control and switch between three Lego minifigures, each...

Mushroom 11 is one of the more interesting games we've seen at the Game Developer Conference this year. The core of the game involves guiding a large fungal mass across treacherous stages by destroying parts of the fungus with touch, and allowing it to grow in the opposite direction. It's a truly unique mode of locomotion, and gets particularly interesting when you have to leave bits of...

One of the annoying things about the current breed of Clash of Clans-style city builders, it's that you have little say in how raids and attacks unfold beyond deploying your units. That's getting addressed in Gamevil's upcoming Mark of the Dragon, which we played around with at GDC 2014. The usual freemium tropes are present, like gathering resources from your village, upgrading structures,...

At GDC 2014 we met up with Gamevil to look at their upcoming action RPG called Elements: Epic Heroes. Players build up a party of adorably blocky heroes and take on classic fantasy quests and adventures. A lot of this involves hacking your way through various monsters, but the real interesting thing here is the control scheme. There aren't any clunky dual joysticks here, players just need to...

Yet another great game we got to check out at the Game Developer Conference is Running Shadow. It borrows a lot of the standard elements from the 3D endless runners we already know, but tosses in a lot of role-playing game elements, such as equipment that changes your character's stats, mana-consuming special moves to dispatch foes, and enough hitpoints to make sure you can take a licking...

Another title we saw from Gamevil at GDC 2014 was Dungeon Link. It takes the tried and true puzzle mechanic of Flow, whereby you trace a line between two same-colored dots without overlapping with other lines, and tosses in a few role-playing mechanics. Instead of simply connecting the two points, players are trying to trace their paths through monsters peppered on the board. Every color...

Gamevil was at GDC 2014 showing off a whole bunch of upcoming Android games, including the next iteration of their well-known RPG series, Zenonia. Zenonia Online, as you might expect, adds a whole layer of massively multiplayer mechanics to the core action gameplay. In addition to hacking and slashing your way through a rich fantasy world, players can now party up co-operatively to take on...

Besides Gates of Osiris, the guys at Fenix Fire also showed a free-to play action game called Smash Derby at GDC 2014. This light and fast title pits players in a gritty arena full of orange and blue robots. Tap your own bot to switch colors, so you can successfully bash into same-colored mechs with a quick swipe. It's a battle against the clock to wipe out the other bots while making sure...

Among our many game demos at GDC 2014 was Gates of Osiris from indie developer Fenix Fire. Players mount up in a rover to patrol their base and precious resources and blow away any alien life forms that may be threatening your continued existence on the post-Earth planet. Resources are used to expand your base, repair your vehicles, and otherwise make it another day without getting sucked...

Movie tie-in being shown off at GDC ahead of debut
The new Godzilla movie hits movie theaters this May and Godzilla - Smash 3 will be rampaging on to Android and iOS right along side it. The first mobile Godzilla game, Smash3 will shown off this week at GDC in San Francisco. According to the developers it's a mix of "rampage-style and puzzle" with some pretty nice looking graphics, too.
We'...

Google gets serious about gaming at GDC
We thought it was great when Google updated Google Play Games last week some much wanted — and needed — features, but it seems that this was just the tip of the iceberg. Google has expanded their presence at GDC, and it looks like they are going all-in with mobile gaming.

Though Project Anarchy may be free, it looks like all a mobile game dev could need
One of the more interesting bits of mobile news at GDC 2013 was Havok's announcement of a free version of their well-established 3D engine. For those unfamiliar, Havok is the backbone of such AAA titles as Skyrim, Black Ops 2, L.A. Noire, and many more. We had to swing by their booth to see just how well it...

Still waiting on retail availability info
We already got some playtime with NVIDIA's Project SHIELD at PAX East, but it was great to sneak in a few more rounds at GDC 2013. As a more industry-focused event, obviously NVIDIA was busy at GDC getting devs on board with Tegra optimizations through sessions, but there were also plenty of Project SHIELD demo units kicking around, giving everyone a...

This ain't your daddy's Tetris - get as many rows as you can in two minutes and customize with power-ups
At GDC 2013, we took some time to talk with EA about the latest mobile iteration of the classic puzzle game franchise, Tetris. Tetris Blitz promises to be a whole new experience: there's no failure, just two frantic minutes of dropping blocks and lining up rows as quickly as possible.

What's a backer launch without a party?
Ouya had their big backer launch bash at GDC 2013, giving everybody a shot to try out the $99 Android-powered gaming console. There has been a lot of excitement leading up to this launch, not only because it stands to be yet another Kickstarter success story, but also because it's paving the way for a whole new product category of Android devices.

We got a sneak peek at an as-yet-unreleased content updated for the free-to-play Real Racing 3 on Android at GDC 2013. The next big update, due to launch this spring, will include cloud saving support, a new hunter race mode where players need to beat a specific car in a single lap, and introduce a new lineup of Chevrolet vehicles, including the Camaro.
I also got to needle the Firemonkeys...

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